Learning to read is one of the most fundamental skills important to educational success. Reading problems may lead to academic and vocational underachievement, and may be a risk factor for various problems including subsequent school drop out, delinquency, and even depression and suicide.
Early screening to predict future reading ability may be important to preventing the development of learning problems. Identifying children who are at risk of developing reading problems may allow educators to intervene and provide remedial or preventative help to the child.
Various testing methods have been developed to assess and evaluate reading ability. Some tests currently available measure reading directly, but do not identify the underlying weaknesses that cause a low reading score. Other tests purport to identify reading weaknesses, and some tests may give guidelines for remedial instructions. Many of these tests are inconvenient and time consuming to administer. However, few tests currently available have research-documented concurrent predictive validity and none combine future prediction with high accuracy.
Accordingly, there remains a need for new ways to identify children who are at risk of developing poor reading skills that is one or more of easy to administer, relatively short in duration, and accurate to predict concurrent, short term, and long term future reading ability.